A bearded ballet that could take your breath away:
Update from a reader:
It did take my breath away, not to mention make my heart pound. You probably already know this, but just in case you don’t: hetero women don’t get NEARLY enough bearded ballet. What do we get? Legolas and Aragorn perhaps? Not enough beard by half and no ballet at all. Good God, I’m racking my brains to come up with anything else. Help me here.
(Oh and thank you. Really really.)
The company is apparently delaying shipments of books published by one of New York’s largest publishing houses, Hachette:
Usually, a customer can log in to Amazon, search for a title and receive the book in just a few days (depending on what shipping option is selected). I just searched for Stephen Colbert’s “America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t” and, in red above “add to cart,” was a section of text reading “usually ships within 2 to 3 weeks.”
Dreher, whose book is among those affected, is pissed off:
I’m sorry, but who made Jeff Bezos filthy rich? Writers and readers — the same people he’s treating like crap with this garbage, that’s who. What kind of retailer treats customers that way? What kind of retailer treats his suppliers that way?
Alex Shephard points out that Hachette doesn’t have many options for fighting back:
[W]hat, if anything, can Hachette do? They have little leverage to speak of. This is, after all, a post-U.S. v. Apple world. If other publishers were to step up in defense of Hachette—a reasonable thing to do, considering that the other four “Big Four” publishers could be next up on the firing line—they’d have to fear another antitrust suit. The major publishers made that mistake once and the U.S. government stepped in at Amazon’s behest. They won’t make it again.
But Gobry argues that Hachette’s market share makes it, in some sense, the stronger party:
The very fact that Amazon is resorting to these comparatively small-ball tactics (suggesting other books, delaying shipping) is really a show of weakness. Because both Hachette and Amazon know that Amazon can’t afford to pull Hachette from its shelves. If anybody has a monopoly on this situation, it’s Hachette. …
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Hachette is the “bad guy” in this story (note: in the vast majority of business stories there is no “good guy” or “bad guy”), or that Amazon should fear Hachette more than Hachette should fear Amazon. Amazon is a very powerful and very audacious company that is clearly going after the publishers on several fronts. But the point is that a hardball fight between a retailer and a supplier is the oldest news in the world, that Hachette, a global multibillion dollar conglomerate, is hardly a helpless flower, and that this is how our economy functions.
Jordan Weissmmann notes that this is not Amazon’s first spat with a publisher:
Amazon has, of course, applied similar hardball tactics in the past. It revoked the “buy” buttons for thousands of books in Macmillan’s catalog when the two companies were in a tiff over e-book prices and removed e-books from the Independent Publishing Group from its site entirely during another contentious negotiation.
This is why many in the book world found it fundamentally unfair that the Justice Department saw fit to bring an antitrust case against publishers and Apple for banding together to force higher pricing on Amazon. Bezos gets to muscle the industry around, yet the publishers—as they would have you believe—are legally bound to sit helpless.
It’s a reminder that, for better or worse, our antitrust laws really have been sculpted with one idea in mind: low, low prices for the consumer. As long as Amazon’s actions seem designed to push down book prices long term, and it’s not colluding with other companies, the law will almost always work in its favor.
The US mission to NATO tweets evidence that Putin was lying when he claimed last week that Russian forces had been pulled away from the Ukrainian borders:
Adam Taylor and Gene Thorp explain why eastern Ukraine matters to the Russian military:
Kateryna Choursina and James M. Gomez of Bloomberg Businessweek recently pointed out that more than 50 factories in Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions provide significant amounts of important hardware for Russia’s military, and that the Russian government’s $15 billion agreement with former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych (the agreement that eventually lead to his ousting) aimed to further intertwine the two country’s defense industries.
The map [here], compiled using information from the Royal United Services Institute, shows where some of the most important sites are for Russia, as well as the major sites of Ukraine’s pro-Russian separatist movement. It shows not only how southeast Ukraine provides military hardware for Russia, but also controls oil and uranium, and even the food for the sailors in Sevastopol.
It’s worth bearing this in mind when we consider the Russian military’s buildup on the borders of Ukraine (whether or not they are gone). The troops don’t just threaten Ukraine: They rely on it. too.
Linda Kinstler points out that Ukraine’s army is unequipped to respond to a Russian invasion:
Ukraine inherited the Soviet military machine when it gained independence. At the time, that meant Ukraine had the second-largest standing army in Europe, with some 750,000 troops. But the new government couldn’t afford to keep up such a large force, and began rapidly cutting costs. Since then, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry has been “consistently downsizing to a force of about 120,000, which they thought made sense,” said Steven Pifer, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine (1998-2000). When Russia invaded Crimea, Ukraine was still in the process of downsizing, and had plans to further decrease its forces to 100,000 by 2017.
Soviet-era infrastructure remains the backbone of Ukraine’s army, which means that most military bases are located in the western part of the country, where they could fend off a NATO attack.
David Patrikarakos adds that, in the east, the police aren’t doing much to combat the separatists and in some cases have joined them:
“Yanukovych had especially strong links to the police force,” says Nataliya Gumenyuk, a Ukrainian journalist and co-founder of the independent online TV station Hromadske.TV. “The police in East Ukraine have been the most corrupt sphere of local government for a long time; they are politically controlled and on the payroll.”
Little surprise, then, that despite their numbers (Ukraine has 300,000 policemen compared with 100,000 soldiers, Kyiv mayoral candidate and former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko told me), for the most part the police have failed to even try to combat the unrest. It is merely the most egregious example of the truth at the heart of the situation in east Ukraine: What remains of Ukrainian national organizations and loyalties are cracking, dissolving, disintegrating.
A reader writes, “Looks like somebody at Airbnb’s advertising agency is a Dish reader”:
Update from a reader who sends her “view from my airbnb this am:)”:
She adds, “Santa Fe!”
German Lopez finds that it remains “very difficult — and potentially dangerous — to operate a marijuana business in Colorado” because “pot shops and producers still can’t work with banks”:
US Attorney General Eric Holder in February issued a memo that attempted to alleviate the banks’ concerns. But the guidance fell flat: it imposed such harsh regulatory and legal standards that banks deemed it too risky to begin loaning to marijuana businesses.
Recently, the Colorado legislature also passed a bill that would establish financial co-ops for marijuana businesses. These co-ops would act much like credit unions, except they wouldn’t get FDIC insurance like other financial institutions. That, state regulators and banks explain, is a death knell: Federal Reserve standards for banks require FDIC insurance, so the co-ops will most likely never muster the federal approval necessary to operate.
As banks and marijuana businesses see it, the issue can only be solved with clear, on-the-books congressional action. And with an issue as politically toxic as marijuana, it’s unlikely a dysfunctional Congress will do anything any time soon.
The Daily Show‘s “senior black correspondent”, Larry Wilmore, has been tapped to step into Stephen’s shoes when he leaves to take over for Letterman next year. To get a sense of Wilmore’s wit, here’s the trailer for a special he did a few years ago:
A more recent clip of Wilmore in action is here. He will host a panel show called The Minority Report:
As the late-night shuffle has taken place over the last few weeks, speculation had ramped up as to whether Comedy Central would mix things up and diversify the predominantly white and male line-up across the late-night TV spectrum. That fact was not lost on the network: “’The Minority Report with Larry Wilmore’ will provide viewers with a distinct point of view and comedic take on the day’s news from a perspective largely missing in the current late night landscape,” the show description reads. “The series will feature a diverse panel of voices currently underrepresented in comedy and television.”
Sharan Shetty is pleased with the network’s choice:
It’s a solid hire, as Wilmore is an accomplished wit with a sterling track record in television: besides his lauded work on The Daily Show, he created the critically-acclaimed Bernie Mac Show, and will also serve as executive producer of forthcoming ABC sitcom Black-ish. The real victory here, of course, is the refreshing addition of a minority voice to the white-male-dominated landscape of late night television. Wilmore is an ideal choice to subvert that genre’s stale perspectives—he’s a thoughtful and compassionate comedian, but one unafraid to confront issues of race, politics, and even Mormonism.
Marlow Stern takes a look at Wilmore’s politics:
As far as where he leans politically goes, Wilmore told Laughspin in 2012: “I call myself a ‘passionate centrist,’ and what that means is that I have opinions, I just don’t care if they’re on the right or the left. Yes, I’ll have an opinion, I’m just not trying to prove either side.”
His stand-up comedy special for Showtime, Race, Religion and Sex, was well-received that same year, and he’s also proven to be a reliable character actor in film and television comedies, appearing in the flicks Dinner for Schmucks and I Love You, Man, as well as a recurring role on the sitcom Happy Endings, playing Brad’s (Damon Wayans Jr.) strict boss, Mr. Forristal.
Matt Willstein wonders if The Minority Report will be successful in addressing the lack of diversity in late night:
On the one hand, Jon Stewart and Comedy Central have declared definitively that they want to produce a show that puts diverse voices in the foreground, giving comedians who may not otherwise get a platform a place where they can share their views on a wide variety of issues. Instead of being the “senior black correspondent” who shows up once every few weeks on The Daily Show, Wilmore will get equal time to Stewart.
But on the other hand, there is a risk that by putting its “minority” talent all together in one place on this show, it actually separates them from the late night mainstream that is still dominated by white guys named Jimmy. By so blatantly making the show about race does Comedy Central risk sending the message to white people that this show isn’t for them?
But, for James Joyner, the bottom line is whether the host can bring the laughs:
I don’t choose my entertainment for the diversity of its viewpoints or a sense of fairness but rather its entertainment value. More than any of the remaining supporting members of the “Daily Show” cast, Wilmore manages to be consistently funny. Alas, maybe because he lives on the other coast, he’s on far too infrequently. His getting his own vehicle is great news.
In another video from MacArthur “Genius Grant” winner Elyn Saks, she identifies the ways society often fails those with mental illness, especially when it comes to stereotypes and name-calling:
In a followup, Saks pushes back on the popular idea that mental illness somehow always leads to violent behavior:
More about Saks:
Elyn Saks is an expert in mental health law and a winner of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, which she used to create the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics. She is also Associate Dean and Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Gould Law School. Saks lives with schizophrenia and has chronicled her experience with the illness in her award-winning, best-selling autobiography, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness.
Update from a reader, who points to a transcript of a TED talk by Saks:
Immediately after the appointment with Kaplan, I went to see Dr. Marder, a schizophrenia expert who was following me for medication side effects. He was under the impression that I had a mild psychotic illness. Once in his office, I sat on his couch, folded over, and began muttering. ‘Head explosions and people trying to kill. Is it okay if I totally trash your office?’ ‘You need to leave if you think you’re going to do that,’ said Marder.
(Archive)
Zack Beauchamp shares the latest from Nigeria:
According to a video made public on May 12, Abubakar Shekau, [Boko Haram’s] leader, demanded an unspecified number of Boko Haram prisoners held by the Nigerian government, possibly all of them, be released in exchange for the girls’ freedom. Political science research on hostage-taking suggests Boko Haram may well succeed at getting a ransom, and some reports say the Nigerian government is already negotiating.
Before this video, Shekau threatened to sell the girls into slavery, chillingly promising that “by Allah, I will sell them in the marketplace.” Shekau’s threat is not idle. Unverified reports suggest that several of the children have already been sold to Boko Haram fighters as “brides” for around $12. West Africa has one of the world’s largest per capita concentrations of enslaved people; there are human trafficking routes that extend into Niger and Cameroon (the latter of which isn’t in West Africa), countries to which Boko Haram has easy access. A lot of the people trafficked in and around Nigeria are children.
Lanre Ola reports that there has been “no immediate reaction from authorities,” while Frank Gardner observes that the US has sent teams of “highly experienced hostage negotiators” to Nigeria. Meanwhile, Nina Strochlic notes that Boko Haram had been terrorizing children for years before the West started paying attention:
[I]n 2012, the organization’s leaders concluded that obliterating the already weak education system would be a valuable means to their end. That year, Boko Haram began burning school buildings to the ground to keep children out of school. At one point 10 schools were incinerated in as many days. … In June 2013, the campaign against schools had turned into violence against children. “When no one took them seriously, they became very angry and so began to attack students and teachers for not listening to them,” Obaji says. Schools were no longer destroyed in the dead of night—they were attacked when class was in session.
Over the course of just two days last June, 16 students and two teachers were murdered. That summer, Boko Haram leader Shekau pledged to continue burning educational institutions and killing educators. According to an Amnesty International report, at least 50 schools were targeted in the state of Borno that year and more than 100 students were killed or wounded, with some attacks claiming dozens of casualties. The campaign seemed to achieve the terrorists’ goals of banishing education – schools closed and an estimated 15,000 children, both Muslim and Christian, were kept from attending class.
At the same time, Lola Ogunnaike suggests that Nigeria’s internal divisions may be at least partly to blame for the government’s sluggish response to the kidnapping:
Several people that I spoke with believe the government would’ve been quicker to react if the students were abducted from a school catering to the Lagos elite. “If this had happened to rich kids in Lagos, the country would have been shut down until they were found,” said the development manager. “But then again, what truly rich kid goes to school in Nigeria after the age of 10? From 10 on, they’re schooled abroad in London. And that’s the problem. The divide between the haves and the have-nots is so great that the elite never feel these things directly. And until the elite feel it directly, it’s going to be really difficult to motivate these people to action.”
Rana Foroohar, reporting on the World Economic Forum’s recent conference in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, elaborates on those divisions:
Just a few weeks ago, the World Bank “rebased” Nigerian GDP numbers to account for the fact that old calculations weren’t taking into account new industries like telecoms and Nollywood. The result was that Nigerian GDP grew by 89 percent overnight, making the country the largest economy in Africa, trumping South Africa. … Yet unemployment is still high and inequality even higher. Half of Nigerians live in poverty, despite vast oil and gas wealth. In fact, that’s one reason that many prominent citizens say that Boko Haram has gained a foothold in the country. Some Nigerians are getting wealthy, but there aren’t jobs for enough of them, particularly given that over 50 percent of the population is under 18 years old. That’s exactly the kind of demographic and economic combination that bred the Arab Spring uprisings.
Previous Dish on the kidnappings here, here, here, here, and here.
Mary Elizabeth Williams reflects on Sam’s kiss with his boyfriend:
In his new Visa spot, Sam defiantly asks fans to “Judge me for what I do on the field.” But that very message acknowledges that his place in sports will always be defined both on and off it. Like other public figures, he’ll be watched and scrutinized for his private life and his relationships. That kiss – and the room full of supporters – invited the world to see Michael Sam as he is, both as a player and a man. He’s not going to play it down for the comfort of anybody else – and this is important. It’s important because it’s the answer to everybody who argues that they don’t have a problem with gay people, but you know, they just prefer them not to be quite so “open and avowed” about it.
While that kiss might not do anything to open the hearts of the crazy YouTube ranters, it is a big step toward tolerance and equality. So if you’ve somehow managed to successfully avert your eyes for too long, or think that gay people are fine as long as they’re not being gay in front of you, go ahead and look. It’s not scary or strange. This is love. This is celebration. This is normal.
Here’s what that embrace and kiss meant to me. It meant that Sam is not afraid, and neither is Vito, his boyfriend. There are no double standards here or special exceptions. If Sam were with a girlfriend, the scene would be utterly banal, if still beautiful. It helps that they are so young – because they are not yet old enough to have their minds clogged with qualifications, warnings, worries. They just respond as two people in love. In that moment, the hug matters more than the kiss; and the faces more than the hug. Look at Vito in the video as he waits for and absorbs the news. The anxiety, the trepidation, the concern for his partner: this is what love looks like.
Then there is the interracial aspect.
The love between a black man and a white man punches a hole through the wall of racism, just as the love of a black man and a white woman or a white man and a black woman. And it punches it with love. There is way too much embedded racism in the gay community, way too much lingering homophobia among African-Americans, and way too much sexual-racial segregation all around. Breaking these impulses down is the work of culture, not law, and as such, it’s life that helps move us forward, not politics. By showing us a simple, obvious love affair across race and within gender, Vito and Michael strip us down to a deeper human identity.
It helps too that this was not a staged kiss. It was incidental to something else: a rite of passage for a football player. And that’s the best way to glimpse love – in passing. It’s always more authentic that way. And it shows too, I think, that it’s not quite right to say that love knows no boundaries. There are boundaries everywhere – class, race, religion, gender, language, geography and on and on. And they are real and daunting at times. But love is uniquely capable of piercing those boundaries in a fundamental way. When it does so, even once, in front of all of us, it creates just a little more breathing space for more people to be more fully human, to be more fully themselves. And I think this is increasingly not lost on straight people. They see that the gay rights movement is not about gays as such, but about humanity. Not just gay potential – but our collective human potential.
Meanwhile, Nate Silver admits he was wrong to assume that Michael Sam “would be chosen by a team like the Patriots or the Seahawks or the San Francisco 49ers that play in an urban area especially tolerant toward gay people.” Why he thinks “St. Louis was probably the best fit all along”:
Interest in the Tigers [the University of Missouri football team, which Sam played on,] is about 50 times higher in Missouri than in the rest of the country, according to the number of Google searches. In other words, a higher percentage of people in St. Louis and elsewhere in Missouri will know of Sam as a football player and not just as a gay athlete. Here’s hoping that helps him to concentrate on what he does best.
Ian Crouch points out that Sam’s “spot on the Rams is far from assured”:
Seventh-round picks are never locks to make the final roster, and it appears that Sam will be competing for a place on special teams, rather than as an everyday starter. In February, when he came out, Sam had been projected as somewhere near a third-round pick. But there were concerns that he was too small to be lineman in the pros, and his performance at the draft combine left scouts doubtful of his ability to play the smaller position of linebacker, which requires speed as well as strength. His new coach, Jeff Fisher, spoke about his team’s commitment to fair treatment, but was plain about Sam’s prospects: “It’s not going to be easy. We’re too deep at defensive end. But he deserves a chance.”
Robert Silverman agrees that this will be a challenge:
He’s going to have to carve out a roster spot on what is generally considered the best defensive line in pro football, featuring stars Robert Quinn and Chris Long, an emerging talent in Michael Brookers, and fellow Rams draftee, Aaron Donald, the 13th player chosen in the 1st round.
Jazz Shaw adds that “if this guy were any other regular player coming out of the college ranks, nobody would exactly faint from shock if he wound up without a team on opening day this fall.” He worries about the reaction should that happen:
Like many, many other young hopefuls, the chance is not only real but fairly high that he might not make the cut and the Rams will have to turn him loose to free agency, where his prospects may not look much better. But now he’s captured media lightning in a bottle. If he is cut, will the immediate howls begin across the small screen Left side blogs, claiming that the Rams’ ownership must all be hateful homophobes? Will boycotts be organized? Will this be held up from the highest ramparts as yet another example of the heteronormative patriarchy keeping the gay man down?
Or will people understand that the Rams are there to try to win another Superbowl and they can’t afford even one weak link in the chain?
Meanwhile, Sam jerseys are selling like hotcakes:
Orders for Michael Sam’s St. Louis Rams jerseys were the second-highest of any NFL rookie drafted this weekend. … “This is unprecedented for a Day 3 pick, let alone a seventh round pick, to crack the top five rookies sold following Draft weekend,” said NFL spokesperson Joanna Hunter.
… has gotten a new lease of life in Washington DC. It’s a play on the legacy of 1948 in Israel-Palestine. The usual suspects did the usual police work. And failed! Tickets are available.
The Dish 
